Fox host Pete Hegseth – Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense – not only believes that women should not be allowed to serve in combat roles and not only has been accused of sexual assault, but he also spent his college days at Princeton campaigning against LGBTQ+ rights, a report from Talking Points Memo has revealed.
As publisher of the conservative magazine The Princeton Tory in the early 2000s, he oversaw a team that railed against the “homosexual lifestyle” and, in one 2002 issue, argued that “The movement to legitimize the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriages is strong and must be vigorously opposed… their lifestyle deserves absolutely no special legal status.”
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In that same issue, Hegseth wrote in his “Notes from the Publisher” that the “glorification of diversity” is “a problem that plagues most of American academia today.” He said Western ideas “deserve priority over other areas of study” because the fact that the United States is a global superpower “demonstrates the[ir] enduring strength.”
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Another slammed the New York Times for its decision to start covering same-sex marriage announcements, calling it “dangerous” because it could inspire people to want to marry siblings, children, or dogs.
The October 2002 issue criticized LGBTQ+ rights protests, declaring that “boys can wear bras and girls can wear ties until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t change the reality that the homosexual lifestyle is abnormal and immoral.”
Hegseth also oversaw an issue that questioned why the university celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. more than Abraham Lincoln, saying King does deserve attention “but only alongside Lincoln.”
In a co-written response to an angry letter, Hegseth and editor-in-chief Brad Simmons also once wrote, “Overwhelming majorities of Americans agree with the notion that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not moral equivalents.”
And in a quote to the Daily Princetonian, Hegseth explained his view: “The argument is not that such-and-such is a bad person because they’re gay. It’s the lifestyle of homosexuality that we consider immoral.”
In adulthood and since his nomination for defense secretary, he has repeatedly argued women should not be allowed to serve in combat roles due to the military’s problems with sexual assault – yet his lawyer recently confirmed he, himself, paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assaulting her at a California conference in 2017.
Hegseth’s lawyer has argued the encounter was consensual and that the accuser is “trying to squeeze Mr. Hegseth for money.”
He doubled down on this position on women in combat just last week, although this time he more or less abandoned the guise of wanting to protect women.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” he asserted in a recent CNN interview. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated…. We’ve all served with women, and they’re great. But our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where, traditionally — not traditionally, over human history — men in those positions are more capable.”
In addition to purging women from combat, he also said he wants to “get DEI and [critical race theory] out of the military academy so you’re not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking.”
Hegseth, 44, served as an Army infantryman in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a member of the Minnesota National Guard. He joined Fox News in 2015 and hosts the network’s Fox & Friends Weekend program, where Trump has been a frequent guest.
Rumors have been swirling that Donald Trump may be reconsidering Hegseth’s nomination for Defense Secretary, but for now he remains the candidate.
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